-| Week No. 2 |-

-| Critique |-

This week my designs focused on coming up with art for my section, Short Talk. All I knew about for art was the super bowl story. I illustrated that with a field goal, a football and a television. I was designing on Saturday and didn't really like the way it all turned out. I had only managed to use the field goals and I really wanted to get the TV on so that I could tease to an online downloadable commercial rating card. So I shuffled things around and got it to work out. The colors on the bottom of my page (in the sidebars and TV) came from the two teams playing. I figured that was a given.

I'm also starting to think about my cover design on interracial dating. It focuses on some black football guys who date white girls. Some of their families don't really like it and some of the guys' black female peers seem to not like it. When I first heard "interracial dating" I had no idea what to think. Now that I know the angle of the story, hopefully I'll be able to come up with some good ideas.

-| React |-

First, Meredith. It was great to see their huge operation, but I just didn't really vibe with it. I am definitely not one of their targeted consumers, that was very apparent. I'm not sure any of us were, actually. I am very excited to work on the prototype with the publishing capstone. I just imagine us taking them these fabulous startups that are nothing like anything they have right now. In a perfect world, we would take the final product to them and they would be completely excited to startup this new magazine as more than just a SIP, but as a real consumer mag.

The last bit of the readings were interesting. I really kind of ended up liking the quiz because it was cool to see how one design might have been influenced by a couple of different design movements. I also really enjoyed a lot of the art out of the Art Deco movement. It's just such a neat style of design. I think that when I travel abroad (I'm looking into Mexico for next fall) it would be fun to keep up my design skills by mimicking styles out of those books.

-| You can't miss . . . Newspaper Design! |-

The only update on newsdesigner.com has been that the LA Times has announced a massive redesign effort to create a paper to be the "backbone" of latimes.com. Recently, the LA Times announced that the website would be their main initiative and that the paper would, in essence, be secondary. This redesign supports that train of thought. It's all so interesting as papers are trying to survive. Also, they're going to lose some space as they swith to a narrower paper. (Like.... The KC Star, The New York Times (Not yet, but announced), The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and probably a few more who will make the narrow switch.)


This page is from The Boston Globe's tab magazine. (I'm just assuming it's on newsprint. Mabye it's glossy like the NYT? If anyone knows for sure, leave a comment!) It's a great example of how so little can be used to achieve so much. Of course you see this huge black cover and go "what the heck?" You read it and then it all makes so much sense. A very effective design.


An interesting 1A from the Merc. They're covering themselves, and look how creative they were about it! This is of course when Knight Ridder sold a ton of its papers to McClatchy (including KC and maybe St. Louis? If anyone knows who holds the Post-Dispatch, comment and let me know.).


Haha! In honor of our trip, an excellent design from the Globe again! It's absolutely hilarious if you've seen the movie, and even if you haven't you have to wonder what the heck is going on!